[SIGCIS-Members] Resources on Technology "Laws"?

[Deborah Douglas]

Josh,

"Laws" are not unique to the computing universe.  Structural engineers often say: "You can't push on a rope" and civils like to remind you that water (and other stuff) flows downhill.  One of the most famous volumes of "laws" comes from the aerospace engineering world: "Augustine's Laws" by Norman R. Augustine and now in its 6th or 7th printing.  Subscribers to this list are likely familar with his 17th Law:  "Software is like entropy.  It is difficult to grasp, weighs nothing, and obeys the Second Law of Thermodynamics; i.e., it always increases."     While there have been many reviews of this book, I do not know if there has been any scholarship that might be broadly applicable to your investigation.

Good luck,

Debbie Douglas


On Oct 5, 2012, at 8:33 AM, Paul N. Edwards wrote:

> There's a nice article about the genesis and meaning of Moore's Law in IEEE Annals of the History of Computing — Ethan Mollick, either 2005 or 2006 -- that gets at some of this and might lead to useful sources.
> 
> Donald Mackenzie has a piece about Moore's Law as a self-fulfilling prophecy in his collection Knowing Machines.
> 
> - Paul
> 
> Le Oct 5, 2012 à 12:43 PM, Joshua Welsh a écrit :
> 
>> Hello!
>> 
>> I wonder if anyone in the group could point me to a resource or two on the "Laws" and Maxims that seem to pervade the technology industry. I'm thinking of things such as Moore's Law, Brooks' Law, etc. I guess I'm especially looking for some kind of "meta scholarship" on laws and maxims themselves. It's simple enough to find sources that explain or contextualize the laws themselves. but a bit harder to find scholarship on the big picture.
>> 
>> A bit of context: I'm working on my dissertation, which involves the rhetoric that technological choices are built upon, and I've stumbled across an allusion to Amara's Law (i.e., People tend to overestimate technology in the short term and underestimate it in the long term.). I got to wondering just how big of a role such laws play in technology decisions. 
>> 
>> Thanks in advance!
>> 
>> -Josh
>> 
>> 
>> -- 
>> Joshua Welsh
>> PhD Candidate, Rhetoric and Scientific and Technical Communication
>> University of Minnesota
>> 
>> Department of Writing Studies
>> 214 Nolte Center
>> 315 Pillsbury Dr SE
>> Minneapolis, MN 55455
>> 
>> _______________________________________________
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> 
> ___________________________
> 
> Paul N. Edwards
> Professeur invité, Sciences Po, Paris, 2012-13)
> Professor of Information and History, University of Michigan 
> A Vast Machine: Computer Models, Climate Data, and the Politics of Global Warming (MIT Press, 2010)
> 
> Terse replies are deliberate (and better than nothing)
>  
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Deborah G. Douglas, PhD • Curator of Science and Technology, MIT Museum, Room N51-209 • 265 Massachusetts Avenue • Cambridge, MA 02139-4307 • http://web.mit.edu/museum  •  http://museum.mit.edu/150 • ddouglas at mit.edu •  617-253-1766 phone  •  617-253-8994 fax



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